St. Paul, Minnesota is on the coast? Cause that’s where they are.
When listening to APHC becomes the hipster thing to do, we’ll know they’ve taken normcore to its utter limit. My late 84-year-old Missourian mother found APHC a tad too square for her tastes. I like it fine, but Mom… well, she was a bit of a hellion in comparison.
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The article didn’t seem to imply that it was the Midwest’s fault that APHC is so corny and boring.
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While I don’t like GK or the skits, I often do appreciate the music.
I have hardly listened to APHC for years, but I used to be a devoted fan. Early on, before the show’s long hiatus. Keillor’s Lake Wobegon monologues used to be marvels. One of the first I listened to concerned a guy who dug out a septic tank only to find it was a 1937 Chevy; after winching it onto his truck he took a wrong turn on the way to the dump and ended up blocking the Homecoming Parade, led by a National Guard tank with his daughter (the Homecoming Queen) riding on top.
This is what I know about APHC:
It’s full of silly jokes and skits that appeal to certain people’s 3 year old inner child. Like mine. It features some fine live music, with a lot folk and country, but also jazz and the Great American Songbook. And Garrison Keillor’s monologue, while it can be hit and miss, can be really, really good about expressing the absurdity of life, in a sort of gentle, forgiving way.
As with any style of entertainment, “chacun ses goûts.” If you want to criticize what I like; I’m quite sure I can find quite a few things to criticize about what you like. (Bojack Horseman, WTF?)
I’ve been listening to and liking APHC every weekend for a very, very long time, since before there was an Internet. I’ve been listening since before it went away the first time, when it came back as “American Radio Company of the Air,” and then when it came back again as APHC. I’m wondering how long Garrison Keillor will keep doing it before he retires.
(Edit: OK, I haven’t exactly been slavishly stuck to my radio these past 40 years of the show’s existence, but I’ve been a pretty faithful listener for, say, the past 5-10 years, and off and on before that. This update brought to you by the Café Boeuf, where the élite meet to eat.)
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Didn’t he have a stroke a couple of years ago? It was something. But the point is, he was very open about it, and spoke in detail (even if I can’t remember them exactly), and he emphasized that APHC was what kept him going in life, and even if he talks a little slower from now on, he’s not slowing down with APHC.
And it looks like quite a few people joined up in order to do just that.
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Oddly enough, this message was brought to you by the Ketchup Advisory Board.
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These truly are the good years. Life is flowing like ketchup on… Panir?
Sorry. I Didn’t adhere to the lyrical form, so you got my crappy attempt at the often brilliant parody.
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My dad just loved PHC. He told me he grew up in Lake Wobegon. That was a pretty long time ago.
This admission is your first step to recovery
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That and/or Thrilling Adventure Hour…
He’s gotta be a lot of people’s ASMR trigger…
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Garrison Keillor is the Lawrence Welk of our age! A reassuring lukewarm porridge, the stinky salve, a sedative for the creeping terror of death peeking through the cracks of denial.
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What does the size of my T-shirt have to do with anything?
Same here. I can stand APHC in short bits, but the show is apparently run by the NPR Mafia, and they demand all of my local NPR stations run it at least twice on the weekends simultaneously so that there is no escape. Also, the show is seemingly 20 hours long, leaving a block of 4 hours in the middle of the night where they play some completely interchangeable electric “My baby left me” 12 bar blues tracks.
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It’s just so hard to enjoy posts like this being a former Midwesterner for whom the show is the equivalent of green bean casserole-- you know it’s probably lacking in substance or nutrition but your upbringing has programmed you not to ask too many questions and just to enjoy the warm familiarity of it. It is what it is.
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Wow. There is some serious love of Garrison Keillor on this thread. I adore the show and so does my super awesome kiddo, but I thought the blog post was fuckin’ funny.
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I thought it was hilarious, as in some one who had binge listened to GKs entire catalog wrote a satirical piece for a laugh. But apparently GK is more polarizing than chili with beans. 
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